iPhone apps and Facebook apps have generated lawsuits before, including Scrabulous, an online knockoff of Scrabble so famous people made videos about it. Hasbro and Mattel forced Scrabulous to change its name to Lexulous and alter its playing board so it no longer mimicked the traditional Scrabble board.

Making software that is similar to an existing game isn't automatically a violation of copyright, according to Rich Stim, an expert who writes for legal publisher Nolo, but it's easy to run afoul of litigious gamemakers.

Jackson West figures such is the karma of Apple's being so aggressively protective about copyrights.